Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Wednesday December 08, 2010 @08:48AM
from the arsenic-is-yummy dept.

radioweather writes "The cryptic press release NASA made last week that set the blogosphere afire with conjecture, which announced: 'NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.' may be a case of 'go fever' science pushed too quickly by press release. A scathing article in Slate.com lists some very prominent microbiologists who say the NASA-backed study is seriously flawed and that the finding may be based on something as simple as poor sample washing to remove phosphate contamination. One of the scientists, Shelley Copley of the University of Colorado said 'This paper should not have been published,' while another, John Roth of UC-Davis says: 'I suspect that NASA may be so desperate for a positive story that they didn't look for any serious advice from DNA or even microbiology people,' The experience reminded some of another press conference NASA held in 1996. Scientists unveiled a meteorite from Mars in which they said there were microscopic fossils. A number of critics condemned the report (also published in Science) for making claims it couldn't back up."

I can't bear to follow them any moreThey used to be able to call press conferences for event like "Hey, we landed on the Moon!" "Hey, we put a telescope in orbit!" Then they started with "Hey, we landed on Mars! Only at a much steeper angle due to some conversion error..." arriving to the current "Hey, we don't have any budget for space stuff, but this paper here looks interesting!"...

That tends to happen when we live in a time when warfare in multiple countries is worth more than expanding the knowledge.I mean, at least WW2 produced SOMETHING that altered science... the atomic era. What do we have... Remote-control planes? better guns?On top of it, mothballing existing projects... ughWhy does it seem like we're in high school and the asshat "cool" kids have taken office?

"I mean, at least WW2 produced SOMETHING that altered science... the atomic era. What do we have... Remote-control planes? better guns?"

The atomic era, and the computers era, let's not forget the latter. That happened because duing WWII the budget for science was huge, much bigger than during the previous times. And that happened because there was a real war going on, and everything implied that the party with the best science would win (as it did). Nowadays, the budget for science is being cut for letting more available to spend on war, on those countries that are participating on the current warmongering.

"Why does it seem like we're in high school and the asshat "cool" kids have taken office?"

Well, one thing is for sure, if you live in a democratic country, the ones in the office are all "cool" man.

You might be interested to know that DARPA is one of the leading forces in funding "green" technology, because increases in efficiency and power generation/transportation mean that supply lines are much less important, and losing one to enemy attacks is not going to destroy your combat ability. This has been one of the major problems in the current war, and has implications for enormous reduction in waste of energy in society. Just filling you in.

Yes, and the Lancet surveys worked by asking people in a particular area (I do not remember which area of Iraq anymore, but I believe it was one of the areas of more intense fighting) if they knew anyone killed or injured by the war, assuming that each of those was a separate, actual event and then extrapolating to the entire country.

They've assembled a space telescope, landed several autonomous rovers on Mars that have exceeded their mission profile tenfold, have a squadron of probes out in the gas giants, another heading for Pluto, a next-generation space telescope the size of a bus is currently under construction. NASA's got a lot of problems but the selectivity of your examples is comical, and your argument bewildering. It's not like the rocket guys go on holiday when the astrobiologists decide to start working on something.

Lets all not get so excited. This is actually the empirical method in action. Its up to the NASA microbiologists to defend their findings, if the findings are bonafide they've got nothing to worry about. This is really nothing new in science, some one finds something new, the skeptics come in and tear it apart, the finder defends his findings, some other researcher duplicates the findings, then NOBEL PRIZE. Just give NASA some more time to either verify or become a laughing stock. Its up to them. Nothing t

You know, many "this paper looks interesting" discoveries had a larger impact on your life through medicine etc than landing on the moon. Don't discredit something with potentially huge implications just because you can't "see" it, groundbreaking discoveries can be on any scale.

First off, you are engaging in the fallacy of idealizing the past, a particular popular fallacy on slashdot. I find the more recent NASA accomplishments a lot more impressive than just lobbing meatbags onto the nearest satellite. Robotic rovers on mars, stardust mission, all manner of flybys and good space science, planetary probe hubble and webb in 2014, etc, Heck, we just had a god damn comet flyby last month.

You want expensive moon missions? Convince your fellow voters to trim 100+ billion off our bloated military budget and to put into NASA. NASA gets a paltry 17 billion annually. We spend almost that much of corn subsidies. Your defense budget is 700 billion.

Dont blame NASA because your democracy is broken and prefers to invest its money on war, defense, subsidies, and science last. Its amazing what NASA is doing with such small amounts of money.

Cutting the Congress mandated bureaucracy with which NASA is fettered would do even more, I think.

Stop trying to run it as a business, as it isn't.Let the engineers buy the best O-rings without having to draft RFPs and attract bidders. The whole bureaucracy added by those who fear others spending "their" money not only costs more, but stifles any inventiveness, visions and daring, and leads to the most expensive mediocrity possible.

First off, you are engaging in the fallacy of idealizing the past, a particular popular fallacy on slashdot. I find the more recent NASA accomplishments a lot more impressive than just lobbing meatbags onto the nearest satellite. Robotic rovers on mars, stardust mission, all manner of flybys and good space science, planetary probe hubble and webb in 2014, etc, Heck, we just had a god damn comet flyby last month.

So "just lobbing hunks of metal into orbit" > "just lobbing meatbags to the nearest satellite"??
Talk about a perversion of difficulty and complexity. Successfully placing people on other celestial bodies and bringing them back is far more difficult than some measly hunks of metal, rubber, and electronics. After putting people on the moon and bringing them back, lobbing satellites is well.. just lobbing satellites. It's like winning the Indy 500 and then spending the next several decades bragging about

Do some research on the shuttle program and then post again. NASA never received the requested budget for the shuttle program, hence the reason it sucked so bad. One fallout of lack of funding was that they used segmented booster rockets to save money, but that ended up being part of the reason for the Challenger disaster. I don't disagree that there may be waste in bureaucracies, but the DoD, and DHS are absolute textbook definitions of wasteful bureaucracies and they collectively get about 40 times the bu

Whether anyone likes them or not, the simple fact is that the paper is sound, and the study of the microbe that lives in the arsenic rich area that lacks phosphorus was discovered years ago, and has been under intense examination for quite some time now, to actually verify that the backbone has an arsenic base instead of a phosphorus one. Which is entirely within reason, as arsenic has incredibly similar properties to phosphorus, which is why it is so dangerous to phosphorus based life, our cells happily p

I managed to find a (probably illegal) copy of this paper at pdfcast [pdfcast.org] and also the supplemental figures [sciencemag.org]. I must emphasize that I have absolutely no experience in professional biology let alone microbiology let alone geobiology. So the bulk of the refutation in the blog posting seems to focus on some procedures that the team took while the paper contains several different correlations supporting the hypothesis that arsenic is a major component in the microbe's DNA. So, for example:

Initially, we measured traces of As by ICP-MS analysis of extracted nucleic acid and protein/metabolite fractions from +As/-P grown cells (11) (table S1). We then used high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) to positively identify As in extracted, gel purified genomic DNA (Fig. 2A). These data showed that DNA from +As/-P cells had elevated As and low P relative to DNA from the -As/+P cells.

So my question is basically what does it matter what they grew or washed the bacteria with when, in one of the many investigations, they found that gel purified genomic DNA had elevated levels of arsenic in them? Unless I'm misunderstanding what 'gel purified genomic DNA' means, I would assume that there's still several pieces of data in these experiments that point toward an organism that uses arsenic in place of phosphorous -- even if only somehow partially. Would this sort of spectrometry reveal any arsenic at all in my gel purified genomic DNA?

So my question is basically what does it matter what they grew or washed the bacteria with when, in one of the many investigations, they found that gel purified genomic DNA had elevated levels of arsenic in them? Unless I'm misunderstanding what 'gel purified genomic DNA' means, I would assume that there's still several pieces of data in these experiments that point toward an organism that uses arsenic in place of phosphorous -- even if only somehow partially. Would this sort of spectrometry reveal any arsenic at all in my gel purified genomic DNA?

Could 400 atoms of arsenate per genome be due to carryover of the arsenate in the phenol-chloroform supernatant rather than to covalent incorporation of As in DNA? The Methods describes a standard ethanol precipitation with no washing (and no column purification which would have included washing), so I think some arsenate could easily have been carried over with the DNA, especially if it is not very soluble in 70% ethanol. Would this arsenate have left the DNA during the gel purification? Maybe not - the methods don't say that the DNA was purified away from the agarose gel matrix before being analyzed. This step is certainly standard, but if it was omitted then any contaminating arsenic might have been carried over into the elemental analysis.

Would this arsenate have left the DNA during the gel purification? Maybe not - the methods don't say that the DNA was purified away from the agarose gel matrix before being analyzed. This step is certainly standard, but if it was omitted then any contaminating arsenic might have been carried over into the elemental analysis.

Seriously? Her criticisms rely on the assumption that they skipped a 'standard step' and didn't delve into it in their paper? Who's being the presumptuous one now?

I think it's pretty common for field to omit standard procedure in their papers lest they become too long and verbose. Hopefully NASA and the team get a chance to respond to these comments although it's looking like a landslide right now.

You know that there are going to be a ton of researchers that are going to want to reproduce these tests so it's only a matter of time.

I did enjoy that blog post though:

The authors never calculated whether the amount of growth they saw in the arsenate-only medium (2-3 x 10^7 cfu/ml) could be supported by the phosphate in this medium (or maybe they did but they didn't like the result).

At times that blog reads more like politics than science. Yeah, it's an extraordinary claim, I guess we should just get used to this sort of reaction whenever something game changing is claimed.

Yeah, it's an extraordinary claim, I guess we should just get used to this sort of reaction whenever something game changing is claimed.

The process has always worked this way. The only difference is that we now have the television, radio, email, and other means of near-instantaneous communication, which allows the drama to play out in public, rather than in academic journals.

"I guess we should just get used to this sort of reaction whenever something game changing is claimed."

The critisims by themselves appear valid and worthy of a reply, the accusations of fraud are contemptuos and make the whole blog unworthy of a reply. If we ever get used to scientists claiming fraud without a shread of evidence then politics will have defeated our one genuinely useful philosophy.

My feeling when I heard the announcement is that this was an AWFULLY big claim to make based on indirect evidence like what they had.

The paper itself was probably fine. The big issue was how it was blown up.

Confirmation by independent methodology would only make sense here. Some controls would also make sense - take some ordinary bacteria with ordinary DNA, mix them up with arsenate solutions like what were used, and then purify the DNA in the same way and show that the arsenate ISN'T carried over.

then redo the experiment to see whether they can reproduce the result.

See:

So the bulk of the refutation in the blog posting seems to focus on some procedures

"I keep doing the wrong thing, and getting the wrong result, WTF?"

Very much like the tired old meme that won't die of aluminum found in the brains of Alzheimers patients. Every time they sliced specimens in an aluminum microtome, they detected aluminum in the specimens.

Why can't these scientists just take the samples and redo the experiments *the right way* (and defend it) to see whether it is indeed a methodological error? If it is a methodological error, the result will go away. Why whining?

It's kind of odd that you had to dig up such an offhand copy of that paper. Usually NASA's scientific papers are freely available through their website, being a publicly funded organization and all that. I wonder if you could get a copy of the paper by e-mailing NASA's astrobiology department.

It should be, if the authors are all US Federal Government employees, and not contractors. Works of the US government are not subject to copyright in the United States. That said, Science's particular reproduction of a report on government work may be covered by certain aspects of copyright. it's a bit tricky. But yes, you should be able to get a copy of the the body of the report with a proper request.

I am not sure where this MOST come from. I am looking right now at Figure S2 (mass spec data, DNA contents only) from the suppl material (page 8) and I see that that the minimal ration of 31P/75AS in samples is 0.002/3.2E-05=60-70

That means that there are at least 60-70 times more 31P than 75AS in the most exciting samples, according to nanosims

It's a requirement for getting more funding and a bigger budget. With the current emphasis on cutting costs and everyone's budget under the microscope, they are trying to generate as much interest as possible in their work.

It's a requirement for getting more funding and a bigger budget. With the current emphasis on cutting costs and everyone's budget under the microscope, they are trying to generate as much interest as possible in their work.

And if it turns out that this is another sensationalistic claim... like the mud they claimed were microbes from Mars... isn't that going to peg them as fraudsters? If this discovery is indeed invalid because of mistakes made... how many times can they do this before the public just goes "Oh look, NASA 'found' something again. Alert the National Enquirer". If their critics in the research community are right, then they'd have been better served by not jumping the gun with this announcement.

This is a huge problem. The quest for PR and public interest has almost eclipsed the quest for knowledge.

NASA's job is not to seek funding, it's to take the funding they are given and do aeronautic and space work with it. This sort of research is draining money away from the actual aerospace mission that NASA has been given.

We have the National Science Foundation to fund this kind of thing. Next thing you will be telling me is that the FDA should be researching deer antlers.

The paper made it through peer review. It was published by Nature, and while the peer review process and closed nature of Nature Publishing may not be perfect the paper was in fact reviewed. However NASA is in go-mode, and they desperately want to find life out there. Maybe when they really get serious about finding life they will send a probe down to Europa and sniff around. No telling what they will find.

Also, arguments in the scientific community are nothing new, and a lot controversy occurs because somebodies research infringes on someone else's predetermined view of things. We still don't know about dark matter very well, or even it exists, we still don't know so many things about almost everything! Text books continue to be updated every year, and the current consensus on big things like String Theory, or whatever are laid down to us as authoritative law, yet rescinded just as quickly when we learn something new. This reminds me of the global warming debate a little bit.

Also, arguments in the scientific community are nothing new, and a lot controversy occurs because somebodies research infringes on someone else's predetermined view of things.

It's telling in this case that many of the sceptical responses are coming from the researchers who pioneered arsenic-based biochemistry.

I'm not sure what you implying. The people who have done work in the field are the people most likely to read and understand the paper. They're the most qualified to give any response at all.

I'm an EE, and I constantly encounter papers I don't fully understand in electrical engineering. There are tons of papers in electrical engineering coming out that I never even bother to read. However, when the papers are in my area of research, I can grasp the details quickly and sometimes recognize mistakes (becau

I'm saying that the criticism has nothing to do with damaging "someone else's predetermined view of things". In fact the most vocal critics are the people who have the most to gain from this research being correct.

I'm saying that the criticism has nothing to do with damaging "someone else's predetermined view of things". In fact the most vocal critics are the people who have the most to gain from this research being correct.

Ah, sorry about that. I misunderstood what you were saying. I agree completely.

Wait, wait, wait. The whole point of publication is to open up your results so that other scientists can poke holes in it and the science can be redone and improved upon. Isn't it kind of a bogus statement say something like "this paper shouldn't have been published"? And with outrage, no less. Could the science really have been that bad and still be approved for publication to begin with? It must have been subject to at least a bit of peer review prior to its release.
How come no one was outraged about the guy who reinvented integration (http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/12/06/0416250/Medical-Researcher-Rediscovers-Integration)?!

It's more like this shouldn't have been published in Science because of the standard of evidence doesn't match the extraordinary claims. More to do with reputation and expectation of standards. Gold-standard reviewed journals just seem like a distant memory now.

Wait, wait, wait. The whole point of publication is to open up your results so that other scientists can poke holes in it and the science can be redone and improved upon. Isn't it kind of a bogus statement say something like "this paper shouldn't have been published"? And with outrage, no less. Could the science really have been that bad and still be approved for publication to begin with? It must have been subject to at least a bit of peer review prior to its release.
How come no one was outraged about the guy who reinvented integration (http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/12/06/0416250/Medical-Researcher-Rediscovers-Integration)?!

The paper spurs justified criticism of methodology; that's perfectly reasonable. What ruffles people's feathers is using the resources of NASA to peddle their results in highly hyped press conferences. The lesson here is that if you're going to do that your research better be airtight. And that would include correlating the research by others using different methods. What they have in no way correlates with the presentation, which makes them look like used car salesmen.

I'm teaching a course in the scientific method and controversial theories this semester, and this is such a perfect example of how science is *supposed* to work. This isn't cold fusion- the original paper passed peer review and was published in Science, not exactly a bottom-feeder journal. NASA is making the organism itself available to anyone who wants it- run your own tests and see if the science stands up.

If it does- awesome. Really neat microbiology

If it doesn't- well an awful lot of published papers turn out to wrong. Acknowledge the mistake and move on.

I see comments about how peer review failed. I'm not a microbiologist so I can't judge if there were any really obvious errors, but peer review isn't supposed to verify claims in papers- it's a sanity check to make sure that nothing blatantly wrong gets through. Given that Science is the 2nd highest impact journal out there I'm sure they have competent peer reviewers available. Is it possible they screwed up? Sure, but it's not a catastrophe: we're seeing science self-correct in exactly the way it's supposed to.

Wrong. Fleischmann and Pons made their initial announcement at a press conference, essentially stepping outside the normal channels of scientific communication. This contributed significantly to the level of criticism and derision they received as more and more researchers tried (unsuccessfully) to reproduce their results.

It's actually even worse than that- P&F did the press conference thing (cutting out Jones' work as well,despite some tentative agreements between BYU and Utah) and the paper that went into J. Eletroanal. Chem. was not peer reviewed at all- the editor accepted it without anything since P&F were well known to him and major publishers in the journal. Nature wasn't going to be willing to publish on the schedule P&F wanted.

There is no "is" in science. Everything is in terms of "maybes." This reflects the epistemological position that nothing in science is certain, but that things can be more or less likely based upon the preponderance of evidence. In this case, the samples may not have been properly washed (the original paper leaves out those details), and if the samples were not properly washed, there is an obvious source of contamination. The correct response is not to attacked Dr. Redfield for disagreeing with the pape

keep in mind all this shit happens at the bottom of the ocean where the pressure is thousands of PSI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent [wikipedia.org].....Although life is very sparse at these depths, black smokers are the center of entire ecosystems. Sunlight is nonexistent, so many organisms — such as archaea and extremophiles — convert the heat, methane, and sulfur compounds provided by black smokers into energy through a process called chemosynthesis......A species of phototrophic bacterium has been found living near a black smoker off the coast of Mexico at a depth of 2,500 m (8,200 ft). No sunlight penetrates that far into the waters. Instead, the bacteria, part of the Chlorobiaceae family, use the faint glow from the black smoker for photosynthesis. This is the first organism discovered in nature to exclusively use a light other than sunlight for photosynthesis......Other examples of the unique fauna who inhabit this ecosystem are scaly-foot gastropod Crysomallon squamiferum, a species of snail with a foot reinforced by scales made of iron and organic materials, and the Pompeii Worm Alvinella pompejana, which is capable of withstanding temperatures up to 80C (176F).

can you imagine the fish tank you'd need to sustain this life on the surface!? the surface of Mars has to be (marginally) more hospitable than this but "Compared to the surrounding sea floor, however, hydrothermal vent zones have a density of organisms 10,000 to 100,000 times greater."

You are missing the point. No one has said that life in an arsenic-rich environment is impossible. No one said that life could not exist without phosphorus. What the critics are saying is that the paper published in Science does not adequately demonstrate that life the bacteria under study can use arsenic instead of p

the finding may be based on something as simple as poor sample washing to remove phosphate contamination.

This conflates two problems mentioned in the article: possible poor washing of arsenic off the DNA, since it apparently likes to glom onto things, and trace amounts of phosphorus in the salts they fed the bacteria that were trying to starve of phosphorus.

As a professional (PhD molecular biology) scientist, I think the starting point is this:
If true, this is the biggest discovery in biology since watson crick, because it really redefines fundamentals of chemistry for life.
This is different from life growing under what seems to us harsh conditions (very acid [pH 1], high temp(boiling water)) etc
Replacing phosphorus with Arsenic is really fundamental, because phosphorus is found in so many different molecules in the cell: in DNA, RNA, tRNA, ATP, phospho lip

Coincidentally, there was an episode on a few days ago discussing the possibility of arsenic-based bacteria. I'm guessing that the episode wasn't churned out in 2 days, so there's probably a decent amount of background to this research.

that facr is most people in the blogosphere ahve no idea how press release are done, not do they know how information on science is released.

The fact is most people in the blogosphere have no idea how press releases are done, not do they know how information on science is released.

If it was something big, NASA wouldn't have announced they where going to do it. This applies to ANY large entity.If it was about getting a signal from another life form, they would have confirmed their data, and then just made t

That's complete bullshit.
This is how science is (and should) be conducted. It's called peer review and it is one of the most important safeguards of the scientific method.
Without thorough and ruthless peer review, people are free to simply make outrageous claims and expect to be believed. That's how religion works.

It is these days. And why not? Open science is better than "protected" science, or "sanitized" science. The Science Establishement letting the people see what science is really like, and doing it in the open, is one of the best things we can do for science.

Anyone questioning the results should be sent a sample of the bacteria for study. Of course they could contaminate it with phosphorous and then we'd have to question their results too. So instead, we should send them the bacteria, and have them clean and eat them:-)

If a scientist other than themselves didn't make the discovery, it's obvious the other guy's methods are flawed!

Scientists can be such whiny, arrogant assholes...whatever happened to science being done for science, rather than recognition?

You do realize that criticizing research is a crucial part of the scientific method, right? Letting claims go unchallenged is the domain of religion, not science.People are ripping apart this paper because it makes grand claims based on a potentially flawed methodology. If the results can be replicated with those flaws fixed, then the NASA team's research recieves further validation. If not, hey, I guess they jumped the gun. Either way, you have to identify the potential flaws, which is what people are doing here.

You are correct, critizing other peoples work is part of the scientific process since it was invented. Just that the public expects our best and brightest to use better debating skills then:

Scientist A: You suck.

Scientist B: No, you suck.

Scientist A: No, you suck.

Scientist B: No, you suck.

etc

Don't know why the general population expects this. It essentially how we all debate. Only diplomats do it better since they know the secret of diplomacy is to tell the other to go to hell in such a way that he lo

This will play out in the journals, not the pages of Slate. Either the method is sound, or it isn't. Either the findings can be duplicated, or they can't. It may take (gasp) at least a few months to see which it is.

Scientists can be such whiny, arrogant assholes...whatever happened to science being done for science, rather than recognition?

Scientists are not saints. Science involves a lot of non-science: finding funding, managing teams, etc. and some people are into outmaneuvering others. As in any other profession, some percentage of scientists are the kind of whiny, arrogant assholes that would attempt to embarrass their col

As in any other profession, some percentage of scientists are the kind of whiny, arrogant assholes that would attempt to embarrass their colleagues in a mass-market publication rather than put the critique where it belongs: The letters section of Science.

First of all, the article in Slate was written by a science journalist (Carl Zimmer), not a professional research scientist. (Not to bash Zimmer, I think he's a good writer, but he has no personal motivation to sling mud here.)

Secondly, if you'll think way back to. . . last week, there was a breathless NASA announcement of an imminent press conference about a game-changing discovery, which received widespread coverage in mass-market publications. We call this "science by press release". At least they actually had a paper, unlike the cold fusion debacle, but they're still guilty of shameless self-promotion.

Lastly, most of the real debate is happening on blogs, and probably a lot of internal email chatter that we aren't aware of. I don't see anything wrong with this, for quite a few reasons. One is that it's simply an electronic, real-time version of what used to happen only at conferences and faculty meetings; people say far more savage things about each other offline. We could wait around for formal responses to get published, but there's a great deal of scientific value in this real-time analysis and dissection of flaws. I'm learning a lot, and I think we'll arrive at a conclusive answer much faster than if we had to read through several months of stilted exchanges in Science.

The editors of major journals are often reluctant to air controversies about the papers they publish. There was a case several years ago where several scientists wrote a letter to a journal pointing out possible evidence of fabricated data in a paper; the journal made them water down the letter, and allowed the author of the original article to get away with a half-assed, evasive reply. What the editors should have done instead was demand raw data and a reasonable explanation, and thoroughly investigated the paper, but they seemed content to let the matter slide. So, what we ended up with was mob justice, and the accused scientist's reputation was quickly destroyed on mailing lists and at meetings. It turned out that he was a serial fabricator, and he may face federal charges for defrauding the NIH.

That's a much more serious example than this one - there's no evidence that the NASA researchers did anything unethical, but there are some serious holes in the paper, and in general the evidence does not meet the standards one would hope for one of the pre-eminent scientific journals. I really hope that there's some truth in their claims, because it would be a fascinating organism to study, but the paper shouldn't have made it past peer review in this state.

I basically agree with almost all of what you've written there. However, I think that blog postings and one line quotes to journalists amount to a lot of opinion. That's fine, but it feels like holding a megaphone up to the side conversations at a conference. We can have "real time analysis" without doing it at the top of our lungs on the front lawn. This is how a conversation at a cocktail party turns into an announcement of life on Mars.

At any rate, this is all premature. According to Zimmer:

Critics say that a few straightforward tests on the bacteria would show whether they really do have arsenic-based DNA once and for all. And the NASA scientists say they're ready to hand out GFAJ-1 to researchers who want to study it.

The beautiful thing about science is that the person who first made the assertion gets recognition. If someone wants to piss on his corn flakes and discredit his findings saying the sample is contaminated then eventually if/when they do come to a conclusion who gets the credit? The guy who first said there was life based on arsenic that's who. In reality if they really are going to continue on like this citing contamination the best way maybe to test it while it is still in it's original habitat (Mono lake

Could they be right? Of course they could be right. It wouldn't change the fact that they sound like five-year-olds.

By the time its dumbed down from the initial scientific review, through the journal, to the PR dept, through the wire service, to the media outlet yes it does.

Where can I go for science news thats not quite as intense as the journals themselves, but more in depth than the normal news outlets? Something that explains whats going on without having to create controversy to justify airtime but recognizes I have a Bachelors and a job and not a PhD?

I'm not sure about every discipline, but some publications by IEEE are intended specifically for professional engineers who want to keep up with their field but don't require the rigor of a journal publication.

I might also suggest conference proceedings for a prominent conference in your field. Conference papers are usually shorter and less in depth than a journal paper, but still offer a good overview of the research.

Thats just it. I keep up on my field just fine. I want to be informed about things outside my field.

My big concern is that I'll hear a story from a generally decent source about something related to my field or to my hobby and they'll get something wrong. Maybe not egregiously incorrect, but just not quite right. That scares me because it makes me wonder what else they're getting not-quite-right when reporting on a field I'm not heavily involved in.

Where can I go for science news thats not quite as intense as the journals themselves, but more in depth than the normal news outlets? Something that explains whats going on without having to create controversy to justify airtime but recognizes I have a Bachelors and a job and not a PhD?

I've always been rather partial to Science Daily [sciencedaily.com]. I find it invaluable for keeping up with the latest advancements and discoveries, presented in a way that is understandable yet not insulting to your intelligence.

I haven't read TFA, but I've read other criticisms of the NASA research, and they said that the microbes had plenty of access to phosphor. And if that's the case, then NASA's assumption that arsenic replaced phosphor in the DNA gets really tenuous.

In fact, I had that very same suspicion when I first read about it. Instead of proving that the DNA contained arsenic instead of phosphor, it really sounded like they just assumed it, because there was so much arsenic and so little phosphor in the environment. Wel

What's most funny about this is, IMO, is that their criticism isn't peer reviewed and they likely haven't attempted to recreate NASA's experiments, which likely means they are even less knowledgeable, less in a position to comment, and likely extremely hypocritical of the situation.

They may very well be right, especially given how political NASA is these days, but it doesn't change the fact that those throwing stones likely have no cause to do so; glass houses being what they are and all...

But they didn't state that was possible. They state that it can multiply by largely replacing phosphor. Which means some phosphor is still required - just in low quantities. Phosphor is still required and that's explicitly stated. Basically what you're saying validates NASA's experiments and further validates my entire point.

I thought NASA's claim was that phosphor in the DNA was replaced by arsenic. If they only multiply when there's phosphor available, and they don't multiply when there's no phosphor, then how can you possibly deduce that the phosphor in the DNA has been replaced?

Yeah... There is a lot of whining going on but having read the paper myself, I can't really say that the detractors don't have a point. The x-ray data from the paper indirectly indicated Arsenic based DNA. There isn't any conclusive proff that it is. The Arsenic DNA was immersed in water which generally destroys Arsenic esters like what Arsenic DNA is but it didn't shatter like glass as it should have. The Phosphorous impurity is several times higher than those levels found to sustain certain microbes.

Mod parent up - this is the most succinct and accurate analysis of the situation so far. We wouldn't be steamed at all if there wasn't some big marketing build-up to some "groundbreaking" discovery with hints of extraterrestrials. NASA was looking for a PR bump to get congresscritters into the mood to fund them more (or at least cut them less), and they took a 3rd rate paper, with 2nd rate review, and tried to make it into a 1st rate media event.

The claims of the finding are not Arsenic dependant bacteria, which wouldn't be particularly impressive. The paper claims a Phosphorus INDEPENDENT form of life (one that can use arsenic instead of phosphorus), something which has never been observed before, and is way different than something that is merely Arsenic dependant.